


The Four Times Rose Was Confusing Whilst on Her Period and the One Time She Wasn't

by mayaspice



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Other, Pete's World, Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-12 05:17:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16866847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayaspice/pseuds/mayaspice
Summary: "Doesn’t it make you angry that you have to pay for tubes of chemically bleached cotton that you have to put inside of yourself five days of every month during a biological process that you’re not even allowed to talk about?" He asks her, but she blushes furiously as she snatches the box of tampons from his hands. When she goes to sulk in their bedroom, he has to remind himself that she’s been conditioned to feel shame towards her body and yes, it might take years of his unrelenting dedication to unravel that terrible habit but he’ll do it, Goddamnit, he’ll do it. He’ll reverse her shame, even if it drives him mad and leads him to an early part-human grave.





	1. The Overreaction

Okay, so he might’ve changed his mind. He _does_ do domestics.

Although when he says domestics now, he thinks less of tedious human necessities like direct debit bills and washing up and more of Rose, stretched out on the sofa, bundled in layers of blankets, ready to welcome him home from work with open arms and warm, wet lips. And he can’t very well say no to that.

It’s on a reasonably insignificant Friday afternoon, three weeks since arriving in Pete’s world with one heart and a blue suit, when he swings the front door to their flat open, exclaiming with a broad smile, “Honey, I’m home!” (He’s made this joke five days a week for two and a half weeks and he still finds it funny, still relishes the laughter from Rose that proves she still finds it funny too because here he is – a man with Time Lord DNA threaded throughout his body – actually enjoying the 9-5 life because it’s not just about the work; it’s about him and Rose together, on this otherworldly and yet completely average adventure together.) but the grin dies on his lips when there’s no familiar duet of laughter from Rose.

“Rose?” He says, the sight of the empty sofa and folded blankets unsettling his stomach.

He pads lightly through the rooms of the house, his cautious hand unconsciously slipping to his inside breast pocket, searching for the sonic screwdriver. It’s not there – of course it’s not, it’s with the _other_ him, probably hurtling through a time vortex somewhere or sitting snug in _his_ pocket as he journeys in another century, another world – and something inside of him sinks. He’s learned through 900 years that even the comforting weight of the screwdriver in his hand brings him a certain kind of reassurance he can’t find elsewhere. He holds his arm outstretched anyway, hoping to trigger some reflexed-induced confidence. It’s funny how easily the human mind can be tricked.

“Rose?” He asks the silence again.

There’s no sign of her in the front room or the bedroom or the bathroom and the niggling pressure in the Doctor’s stomach is starting to develop into a worrying tug. Terrible thoughts ricochet through his mind: kidnapping, a hostage situation, murder, maybe an accident involving the unintended transportation of some dangerous alien artefact slipped from Torchwood into Rose’s bag.

As he moves through the front room to the kitchen, the last room of the flat, he hears muffled sounds. It’s Rose, slumped on the tiled floor, leaning against the cupboards, shaking with haggard breath. She looks up at him and her nose is all red and dry and just the sight of him makes her face contort into this vision of pain and upset and the Doctor glides towards her without a millisecond’s hesitation, as though his body is magnetised to hers.

“Rose,” he coos as he sinks down on his knees, big hands coming up to wrap around her upper arms. “What’s wrong?”

She goes to speak and a sad strip of spittle breaks between her lips.

“What’s wrong?” He asks again, urgently. “Are you hurt? Are Jackie and Pete all right? Is there a problem at work?”

Her cheek is hot under his fingertips.

“We…” she croaks.

There’s a tightening in his chest – a perfectly natural physiological human reaction to worry, yet awfully unpleasant nonetheless – as he convinces himself she’s about to call off their affair and send him on his way, hitchhiking across the universe.

“We…” She sniffles. “We’ve…” A choked cough. “We’ve run out of dishwasher tablets.”

The Doctor’s hands freeze on her cheek. He continues to stare at her for a few seconds, waits for the moment when she’ll erupt in a fit of laughter, gasping through giggles _You should’ve seen your face!_ But it never comes.

“What?” He lets out on a heavy exhale, moving back up onto his feet, anxious hands sifting through his hair, heartbeat gradually slowing.

“I was cleaning the flat.” She pauses then takes a deep breath as though it’s all too much to recount. “Wanted it to be all nice and tidy for when you came home. I went to do the dishwasher, got it all packed up, dirty food all over my hands, you know. And then I went to the cupboard and we haven’t got any tablets.”

“Rose,” he draws out, his hands coming up to cradle his own face. “I thought someone died.”

That only makes Rose cry more.

“How long have you been down there for?”

Rose wipes a finger under her nose. “Probably about half an hour.”

“Half an–” He cuts himself off before he can explode properly, because for all its worth, despite Rose’s uncharacteristic (and frankly, confusing and even a little aggravating) behaviour, she’s still upset and he couldn’t live with himself if he made her feel worse.

“What’s wrong?” He asks softly, sinking again to her level, tracing the freckle on the back of her hand. “Was there a chemical leak in your department? Did you ingest an unknown substance? Take a strange looking pill or something?”

“No.”

“Then why are you crying over dishwasher tablets?”

The irrationality of it spoken aloud makes fresh tears in her eyes. “I’m,” she waves her hand around. “Due on. I think it’s probably something to do with that.”

“Due… what do you mean due on?”

She looks up. “On my period, Doctor.”

And in that moment, in the cramped little kitchen of their third storey East London flat, the Doctor begins his intensive education in the strange and complicated workings of the female menstrual cycle.


	2. The Change of Mind

The Doctor has noticed that human males like to boast about having female company. _Oh yeah, I had three birds on the go at once when I was eighteen,_ he overheard a deep voice say as he walked past the local pub one evening. But as part Time Lord – and in turn, only part-human – when the Doctor says he has spent a lot of time in the company of women, he means it as a stone-cold fact rather than a pretentious comment. He can’t help it, not really, he’s always been drawn to powerful women and thankfully, he seems to attract them too; especially the inquisitive, hopeful types. In fact, he’s travelled more frequently _with_ women than he has _without_ them and so of course, he’s spent a rather large portion of his life in close proximity with menstruating humans, despite not knowing it at the time.

The thing is, for some reason he hasn’t quite worked out yet (even after three weeks living as part-human, he finds their societal rules and norms utterly irrational – particularly British ones), periods aren’t often a popular conversation topic. It’s not as though in a group of good friends sitting in a beer garden waiting for their Sunday lunch, one woman might – quite naturally, and in an appropriate succession of the previous matter – offer details of her menstrual cycle, and another woman might chime in with contrasting intricacies of her own period-related experiences, and upon hearing this, a male member of the group might be thoroughly interested in the vastly differing effects of menstruation from woman to woman and set about asking his female counterparts respectful and sensible questions. No, actually, apparently – according to Rose – that would be considered quite strange indeed.

(She’d explained this to him on the night of the kitchen-floor-crying-incident which they decided to henceforth refer to as The Dishwasher Tabletgate Scandal, or, Tabletgate for short.)

Although he is still dumbfounded that such a natural process is considered outrageously taboo to discuss, it comes as no surprise when Rose tells him because, as he has travelled with many women throughout the years (still not boasting), he has tried on many an occasion to bring up the subject of periods with each of his female companions. His initiation of the subject matter was always purely in the quest of becoming just that little bit more aware of other life forms but despite his professional detachment, every last one of them grew noticeably uncomfortable and went on to change the conversation to something completely unrelated in order to steer the focus as far away from the shedding of their uterine lining as possible.

Rose follows in her predecessors’ footsteps; unwavering to the Doctor’s questioning. ( _Rose, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, shouldn’t I try to understand what you’re going through? Without wanting to sound too cocky, I am quite clever, you know, Oncoming Storm and all that, but I can’t comprehend how you feel unless you tell me. Doesn’t it make you angry that you have to pay for tubes of chemically bleached cotton that you have to put inside of yourself five days of every month during a biological process that you’re not even allowed to talk about?_ He asks her, but she blushes furiously as she snatches the box of tampons from his hands. When she goes to sulk in their bedroom, he has to remind himself that she’s been conditioned to feel shame towards her body and yes, it might take years of his unrelenting dedication to unravel that terrible habit but he’ll do it, Goddamnit, he’ll do it. He’ll reverse her shame, even if it drives him mad and leads him to an early part-human grave.)

So that’s where he finds himself on Saturday night, – two nights after Tabletgate – sympathising with his precious Rose and all other menstruating humans, that their world teaches them to apologise for their perfectly healthy bodies. He wishes he could empathise with her but he simply _can’t_ and so in a roundabout atonement for his inability to truly understand, he throws all of his love Rose’s way.

Rose basks in his uninhibited physical affections; keening when he presses a kiss to her cheek, giggling when he brushes a hand through her hair, practically purring when they retire to bed and he pushes his front against her back, snaking an arm around her stomach. (Amongst learning about periods, the Doctor has also learned about spooning, and the most significant thing he has learned – perhaps the only thing to learn from spooning – is that he is always to be the Big Spoon. Even after a specific request to be the Little Spoon, his go only lasts five minutes and regardless of what spoon he asks to be, they inevitably fall asleep like this.) Rose hums contentedly, tugging the Doctor’s hand cradled over her stomach further into her body, pulling him tighter around her back. She stretches her other hand to the outside of his thigh and pushes it – although not with much actual force, since it’s a bit of a tricky angle – and the Doctor takes her hint and shuffles forward, presses his body further into her back until there is absolutely no space between them and his face is swallowed by her hair. She sighs happily and strokes his hand that she’s holding against her breasts (or perhaps it’s her heart. No, the most primary things are definitely her breasts). He loves it when she’s like this; all warm and wanton and desperate for his touch. It does something to his insides that he’s never felt before; something like a pride and desire and adoration and gratitude cocktail.

After a few moments, Rose decides that even though there’s not a millimetre of space between them, it’s still not close enough, as she at pulls the Doctor’s arms and leans back against him. 

He chuckles into her hair. “If you keep doing that, I’ll squash you.”

“I want to be swaddled,” she mumbles, opening her legs momentarily for the Doctor to slip one knee between them, her bottom resting to fit snugly against the dip at the top of his thigh.

This time he’s the one to purr as she gently undulates her hips. Rose giggles breathlessly and brings his hand to her lips.

“I love you,” she says against his fingers.

He uses his nose to nuzzle strands of hair out of the way, pressing his mouth to the very base of her neck.

They stay like that for a while and although the Doctor is imagining a certain way they can become even closer, he realises it’s also quite nice to be this close without reaching into the intimate places hidden in their respective pyjama trousers. In a strange way, it reminds him of how they used to be; all reserved desires and vicariously expressing their affections through moderately innocent embraces.

He can tell Rose is asleep when her breathing deepens and her muscles loosen around him. He tries to join her in sleep but, what with his human body (oh, who is he kidding, this would’ve been a humongous feat even in his Time Lord body) and a particular organ that gets excited with the weight of a woman’s bottom against it, drifting off proves slightly more difficult than usual.

The Doctor closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of Rose’s neck, the smell that even with all his knowledge of wonderful words from every fantastic and ancient language known in the universe, he can only describe as _distinctly Rose,_ and finds his hand in Rose’s relaxed grip moving unconsciously to her chest (this time it’s definitely her heart he’s focused on, and not her breasts) and feels the steady drum reverberating under his fingertips. He closes his eyes, focuses on the pulse against his hand, and tries to conjure pleasant images to encourage sleep. In his mind, he’s on some cold and gloomy excuse for a beach (which, he has always thought, should not be so lucky as to be granted that title because beaches should be sunny and colourful and happy, not windy and brown and dismal) but it’s all right because his hand fits perfectly in the hollow of Rose’s palm, and they watch silently yet comfortably as the tide washes in and out to the beat of Rose’s heart.

 

 

The Doctor wakes in the morning, still tangled in Rose’s revised vise-like clasp, and it’s just as lovely waking up like it as it had been falling asleep like it. Rose is still puffing soft bursts of air through her nose, her mouth slightly agape, the look of light sleep endearing enough for the Doctor to press an appreciative kiss to her shoulder.

When Rose wakes, and the Doctor can feel her muscles tightening and her bones popping as she stretches, she clamps a hand around his that rests at her hip and just when he thinks she’s going to do something romantic – maybe bring it to her lips and kiss it good morning, maybe lace her fingers through it and squeeze, or maybe move it to another part of her body that is equally as warm and comfortable – she picks up his hand and throws it back at him.

“Get off,” she moans against the pillow, twisting away from him. “You’re such a lump.”

“Rose,” the Doctor protests, staring dumbly at her. “I was enjoying that.”

“It’s so hot. Can’t you feel that, Doctor?” She says as she points to her back. “That’s sweat.”

“I know but I like it.”

“Don’t,” she whines as his hands find their way to her hip again. “Really, don’t.” She turns around and pushes at his chest with her palms.

He rolls inelegantly to the other side of the bed. Rose returns to her side without catching his eye, leaving a sad looking gap between their bodies. The Doctor stares at the back of her head, completely in shock at his sudden exile.

He doesn't catch what she says (she might as well be miles away from him now) but he thinks she mumbles something like, “So needy in the mornings.”

“Rose.” The Doctor says, almost choking on the word. “What happened to ‘I want to be swaddled’?”

In response, Rose lifts her head, extracts a pillow from under her and plants it directly against her back, as if she hadn’t already harshly made her point.

The Doctor scoffs but it goes unheard because Rose has - astoundingly - already elapsed into the regulated breathing of subconsciousness.

It’s this rather unwelcome wakeup call (quite literally) that teaches him sometimes during a woman's period, the woman you wake up to is alarmingly different to the woman you to go to sleep with.


End file.
